The son has no liking towards having a formal training in music. However, his ancestors have been traditionally rooted in classical music. So the boy is forced to learn music. Unless the heart is rooted, talents don’t branch out. The boy prefers football to music. Excellence isn’t something that can be thrust upon. The urge for excellence has to come from within. The boy doesn’t do well in music. His teachers criticise him, “Hailing from such an illustrious family, it is a shame that you don’t have interest in music.” The family denounces him saying, “Don’t spoil the family name. Football will not feed you. Drop it and focus on music.” Everybody screams, “Practice more.” How much ever you may practice, a donkey’s bray will never become a cuckoo’s song. In not being able to live up to the expectations of his loved ones, the boy starts feeling less about him. This feeling, “May be, I am not good enough,” begins to show up in all his performances.
I feel it is prime parental responsibility to give children avenues by which they feel like a success. From relationships to career, more than what I do, how I feel about doing it forms the foundation for my future.
The issue isn’t football or music. During growing years, either in academics or in sports or in theatre or in arts or in social work etc., the path is immaterial. But in some path, children should feel a taste of success. A girl who feels that sense of success in BA Economics will do much better with her future than the girl who feels like a failure in BE Electronics.
We say the overall standard of education has dropped!! Why wouldn’t it?
His marks didn’t get him into engineering, but his dad’s money did.
His merit didn’t get him into medicine, but his caste did.
His performance didn’t get him into management education, but the letter from the Minister did.
We end up building a society with Chartered Accountants, who do not have the flair for numbers, doctors who lack sensitivity, engineers who lack analytical abilities, teachers who can’t feel the subject... and then we cry “Why is the world like this???” How else will it be when we have architectured it this way...
Success or failure is not about potential, but it is a matter of interest. The mind will easily follow the heart, but the heart will seldom follow the mind. Competence cannot always cause passion, but passion can always develop competence. Not all first rank holders come first in life. Not all backbenchers remain a backbencher in life. Our past is never equivalent to our future.
There is nothing in a caterpillar that suggests that it can be a butterfly, and yet it becomes one. What we were and what we are, turn inconsequential to what we can become in life.
Give your child a chance by choosing a path where his best will come out. Not everybody can be good at everything, but everybody can be good at something.
Let us stop the perpetuation of the feeling “May be I am not good enough” !!
Ever Loving
Ganesh Ramachandran
